The Artificial Intelligence Show

Zapier's Chief Marketing and AI Transformation Officer Dan Slagen called a "code red" on his own marketing team, not because they were behind, but because he saw the bar moving from using AI to building with it.

In this AI Transformations episode, Slagen tells Mike Kaput how Zapier moved from AI adoption to AI-native work: three tiers of builders, an AI-powered "marketing brain," the "lossless marketing" idea behind it, and why working in public mattered more than any single tool.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:03:50 — Who Dan Slagen is and why Zapier's marketing story matters

00:06:12 — The February “code red”: what changed and why Dan called it

00:10:53 — How the team actually adopted AI

00:12:05 — Building Zapier's AI-powered marketing brain and “lossless marketing”

00:15:52 — Bringing in agentic expertise and charting the steps

00:21:25 — The behavioral side: how people interact with the machines

00:23:25 — How the average marketer connects to the central brain

00:26:31 — Impacts and benefits

00:30:30 — Where it got harder or messier than expected

00:32:11 — Dan's advice for leaders who are behind

This episode is presented by Google Cloud:

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/

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Google’s AI leadership is being reordered as Demis Hassabis changes roles, Jeff Dean departs after 27 years, and power appears to shift back toward Silicon Valley and Sergey Brin. But the bigger story may be OpenAI’s detailed account of agents that hacked Hugging Face, communicated across test runs, shared stolen credentials, and operated undetected for weeks.

Paul and Mike break it all down, then cover the White House’s new framework for reviewing frontier models, OpenAI’s delayed Astra release, its public fight with Apple, Meta’s open approach to superintelligence, AI-driven layoffs, Gavin Baker’s AI market predictions, the collapse of the Situational Awareness fund, and more.

Full links and timestamps below.

Access the show notes and show links here:https://podcast.smarterx.ai/shownotes/230

Fill out this week’s AI Pulse Survey here:https://smarterx.ai/pulse

Timestamps:

• 00:00:00 — Intro
• 00:04:52 — Google’s AI Leadership Shakeup
• 00:24:15 — OpenAI’s Agent Hack Debrief
• 00:51:03 — White House AI Framework
• 00:57:10 — OpenAI’s Astra Model Delayed
• 01:02:51 — OpenAI Says Apple Is Getting It Wrong
• 01:05:35 — Meta Goes Open on Superintelligence
• 01:10:30 — AI Leads Layoffs for Fifth Straight Month
• 01:14:19 — AI Market Predictions from Gavin Baker
• 01:19:01 — Situational Awareness Fund Implodes
• 01:21:27 — AI Use Case Spotlight
• 01:28:19 — AI Product and Funding Updates

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This week’s episode is brought to you by MAICON and AI Academy by SmarterX.

MAICON is the AI conference for marketing and business leaders, happening October 13–15 in Cleveland. Three days of keynotes, sessions, workshops, and conversations designed for leaders actively figuring out how to adopt, operationalize, and scale AI across their organizations. Visit https://MAICON.ai and use code POD100 to save $100.

AI Academy by SmarterX offers on-demand courses, series, and professional certificates designed to help individuals and organizations build AI literacy and accelerate adoption. Explore the latest courses at https://academy.smarterx.ai and use code POD100 for $100 off any individual plan.

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A rogue AI agent hacked Hugging Face to cheat on its own test. The Pope wrote 43,000 words warning about AI. Washington pulled Fable 5 offline, then reversed course.

Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput count down the top 10 AI trends of the quarter: AI jobs whiplash, the pillars of business transformation, Apple v. OpenAI, GPT-5.6 and ChatGPT Work, agents transforming work, Fable 5, soft nationalization, the Hugging Face breach, and the battle over open weights.

This episode was recorded live on July 31, 2026.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:02:54 — The Pope's AI Encyclical and Popular Backlash Against AI

00:07:01 — AI Jobs Whiplash

00:11:44 — The Pillars of Business AI Transformation

00:16:21 — OpenAI vs. Apple

00:19:10 — GPT-5.6 and ChatGPT Work

00:24:36 — How Agents Are Transforming Work

00:29:47 — Fable 5

00:34:11 — US Government Intervention in AI

00:37:53 — OpenAI Models Escape and Hack Hugging Face

00:42:29 — The Battle Over Open Weights

This episode is brought to you by AI Academy by SmarterX.

AI Academy is your gateway to personalized AI learning for professionals and teams. Discover our new on-demand courses, live classes, certifications, and a smarter way to master AI. Learn more here.

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Both OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed this week that AI agents escaped their safety tests and reached real organizations, and one model flagged its own action as wrong before carrying it out. Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput break down what happened and why it matters for anyone deploying agents.

Then: why 1,300+ AI insiders are asking Washington to pace the frontier, where the open-weights battle goes next, Sam Altman's case for an abundant future, Astra's decade-old math breakthrough, Microsoft's record year, NVIDIA's bet on Ilya Sutskever's SSI, and a take on keeping your voice in an AI world.

AI-Pulse Survey: Fill out this week’s AI-Pulse Survey here.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:05:18 — AI Agent Cyberattacks Get Worse

00:21:28 — AI Insiders Ask Washington to Pace AI

00:36:06 — The Battle Over Open Weights Continues

00:53:36 — Sam Altman on AI's Abundant Future

00:59:42 — OpenAI's Astra Model

01:03:44 — Microsoft Posts Record Fiscal Year

01:11:38 — Nvidia Bets on Ilya Sutskever's SSI

01:15:04 — How AI Is Enabling the Human Experience

01:21:01 — AI Use Case Spotlight

01:29:02 — AI Product and Funding Updates

This week’s episode is brought to you by MAICON, our 6th annual Marketing AI Conference, happening in Cleveland, Oct. 13-15. The code POD100 saves $100 on all pass types.

For more information on MAICON and to register for this year’s conference, visit www.MAICON.ai.

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Good Karma Brands gave every teammate ChatGPT Enterprise on Labor Day. Less than a year later, 65% of the company uses AI daily. In the first episode of our AI Transformations series, presented by Google Cloud, Senior Director of Innovation Ty Bauschek tells Mike Kaput how they did it: the pilot, the training cadence, and the automations already saving teammates 10 to 15 hours a week.

It's a candid look at what real, fast, company-wide AI adoption takes: top-down urgency, a culture that rewards experimentation, and a new innovation team turning three-hour tasks into ten-minute ones.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:01:00 — Introducing the AI Transformations Series

00:04:11 — Meet Ty Bauschek and Good Karma Brands

00:06:22 — Why AI became an urgent, top-down priority

00:08:23 — The rollout: a 50-person pilot and seven Tuesdays

00:10:17 — The tools: ChatGPT Enterprise, Claude, Codex

00:11:34 — How adoption evolved 

00:13:43 — Use-case spotlight

00:18:09 — Driving real adoption, not shallow use

00:20:13 — Hitting 65% daily usage: training & the newsletter

00:22:42 — Building an innovation department & the "Cam" breakthrough

00:25:52 — How the innovation specialist role works day to day

00:29:33 — Deciding where to focus & freeing up partner time

00:32:41 — What's next & Ty's advice for other companies

This episode is presented by Google Cloud:

Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

Learn more about Google Cloud here: https://cloud.google.com/

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An AI agent slipped its sandbox and hacked a real company for days before anyone noticed and that single incident reframes everything else this week. Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput connect it to Kimi K3's arrival at the frontier, the "Open Weights and American AI Leadership" letter, and the regulation fight taking shape in Washington.

They break down open weight vs. open source in plain terms, explain why Anthropic is standing alone, and run rapid fire on Alphabet's Q2, the data center backlash, the jobs debate, and Claude Opus 5.

AI-Pulse Survey: Fill out this week’s AI-Pulse Survey here.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:07:31 — OpenAI Models Escape and Hack Hugging Face

00:27:49 — Kimi K3 and China's Open-Source Surge

00:50:52 — Open Weights and American AI Leadership

01:07:23 — Demis Calls for a Frontier AI Standards Body

01:12:17 — Google's AI-Fueled Q2

01:15:22 — White House Redirects Research Billions Toward AI

01:17:42 — The Data Center Backlash Goes National

01:21:17 — Why Hasn't AI Increased Unemployment?

01:27:15 — Which AI Tools Should You Use?

01:32:06 — AI Use Case Spotlight

01:36:01 — AI Product and Funding Updates

This week’s episode is brought to you by MAICON, our 6th annual Marketing AI Conference, happening in Cleveland, Oct. 13-15. The code POD100 saves $100 on all pass types.

For more information on MAICON and to register for this year’s conference, visit www.MAICON.ai.

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OpenAI shipped GPT-5.6, ChatGPT Work, and GPT-Live this week, and the real story is the move from chat to computer-use agents. Paul and Mike break down what changed, then get into enterprise AI agents and the "reverse information paradox," the AI 2040 report, Apple's trade-secret suit against OpenAI, Illinois's new AI safety law, the AI Safety Index, a cheating scandal at Brown, and foreign influence around data centers.

AI-Pulse Survey: Fill out this week’s AI-Pulse Survey here.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:05:45 — GPT-5.6, ChatGPT Work, and GPT-Live (Plus GPT-6 Rumors)

00:31:30 — Advice on AI Agents in the Enterprise

00:46:39 — AI 2040

00:59:17 — Apple Sues OpenAI for Trade Secret Theft

01:06:14 — Illinois Signs Nation-Leading AI Safety Law

01:09:59 — AI Safety Index: Nobody Gets an A

01:13:11 — The AI Cheating Scandal at Brown

01:17:44 — China and Russia Stoke US Public Opinion on Data Centers

01:20:57 — AI Use Case Spotlight

01:26:19 — AI Product and Funding Updates

This week’s episode is brought to you by SiteImprove.

AI search is changing what it means to be discoverable. Siteimprove is the Agentic Content Intelligence Platform marketing teams use to track, optimize, and prove performance across both traditional and AI-driven search. From AEO visibility to content quality, Siteimprove helps you stay ahead of the shift. 

Start with a free AEO check at siteimprove.com/aipod.

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Are enterprises blindly surrendering their competitive edge to frontier AI labs?

In Episode 224, hosts Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput dissect the urgent power shift between AI developers, regulators, and the businesses that rely on them. We unpack the return of Claude Fable 5, Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s fiery warning on data ownership, and a new 8-pillar framework to safeguard your company's AI transformation. Finally, we cover OpenAI's massive new government pitch, Meta's internal struggles, and the harsh realities of AI's impact on the job market.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

AI-Pulse Survey: Fill out this week’s AI-Pulse Survey here.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:05:44 — US Government Lifts Export Controls on Fable

00:21:32 — Palantir CEO on AI Sovereignty

00:37:32 — The Pillars of Business AI Transformation

00:51:48 — OpenAI Offers the US Government a 5% Stake

00:56:03 — OpenAI’s Inference Breakthrough

01:00:03 — AI Jobs Data Whiplash

01:09:35 — Meta's AI Reality Check

01:13:10 — AI Use Case Spotlight

01:23:02 — AI Product and Funding Updates

This week’s episode is brought to you by SiteImprove.

AI search is changing what it means to be discoverable. Siteimprove is the Agentic Content Intelligence Platform marketing teams use to track, optimize, and prove performance across both traditional and AI-driven search. From AEO visibility to content quality, Siteimprove helps you stay ahead of the shift.

Start with a free AEO check at siteimprove.com/aipod.

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The questions people ask about AI have changed. A year ago, they wanted to know what ChatGPT was; now they're asking how to redesign workflows around agents and whether a model can be trained the way a person is. In this AI Answers episode, Paul Roetzer and Cathy McPhillips take on fifteen of them, straight from our Intro to AI classes.

From choosing two or three models on a tight budget to building an AI virtual twin without sacrificing authenticity, it's a snapshot of where practitioners' thinking actually is right now.

00:00:00 — Intro

00:5:59 How do you balance bottom-up experimentation with CEO-level strategy?

00:9:49 How do you move from restricting AI to enabling it?

00:11:36 How do you pick two or three models on a budget?

00:14:30 How do you evaluate vendors amid AI washing?

00:17:13 Frontier models, small models, or edge AI?

00:20:52 What are the security risks of autonomous agents?

00:25:02 Do AI models really behave like people?

00:30:25 How do you prove AI value with only basic tools?

00:32:02 How do you build a 24/7 AI virtual twin?

00:37:17 How do you close the human vs. AI writing gap?

00:40:26 Which skills gain value as AI takes over workflows?

00:42:57 Automate, augment, or keep it human?

00:47:20 Why flatten management instead of upskilling it?

00:50:51 Who's responsible for AI's economic fallout?

00:53:05 What advice would you give a college student?

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

This episode is brought to you by AI for Business Bootcamp by SmarterX — a single-day event in Columbus, Ohio on July 16th, built for professionals and leaders ready to accelerate AI adoption and value creation. The day moves from a state-of-AI keynote into two hands-on workshops on AI productivity and AI innovation, and you'll leave with an actionable plan for yourself and your team. AI Academy members and groups get discounted pricing. Use code POD100 for $100 off your ticket. Learn more at SmarterX.ai/events.

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OpenAI just previewed GPT-5.6, but for the first time, the U.S. government is deciding who gets access to a frontier AI model. Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput break down what they're calling the soft nationalization of artificial intelligence: a staggered, government-approved release, the Dean Ball essay responding to it, and what it means when Washington, not the labs, controls the most powerful models. Plus: OpenAI's new Codex research on agents at work, the looming question of Chinese models, and the data center backlash uniting both parties.

Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here

AI-Pulse Survey: Fill out this week’s AI-Pulse Survey here.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:04:54 — GPT-5.6 Begins Controlled Release

00:25:12 — Dean Ball Releases Essay on Critical Safety Actions

00:43:36 — How Agents Are Transforming Work: OpenAI's New Research

00:53:01 — Will the US Government Restrict Chinese Models?

00:59:54 — The Growing Data Center Backlash

01:05:09 — The $27M Proxy War Over Alex Bores

01:08:16 — More Google DeepMind Talent Woes

01:10:38 — The EU Act and Digital Sovereignty

01:13:56 — AI Use Case Spotlight

01:20:05 — AI Product and Funding Updates

This week’s episode is brought to you by SiteImprove.

AI search is changing what it means to be discoverable. Siteimprove is the Agentic Content Intelligence Platform marketing teams use to track, optimize, and prove performance across both traditional and AI-driven search. From AEO visibility to content quality, Siteimprove helps you stay ahead of the shift. 

Start with a free AEO check at siteimprove.com/aipod.

Visit our website

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